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Ashe had, at this point, lost track of how many times Katarina had slipped in through the window of her bedroom late at night and fallen into bed with her.
It was a ritual now so clearly defined that, on some occasions, they hardly said a word about it. Both of them knew the expectations by now, and what each wanted of the other. There were no complaints, no further questions, no need to express worries. They communicated largely through their bodies, after the initial parameters had been set.
One of said parameters had come from Katarina at the start of all of this when she had explained that she “doesn’t really kiss.” Ashe had accepted this with no outward protest at the time, nodding in understanding. Sure, she didn’t share the sentiment - a fact that had become blindingly obvious as Sarah, the other frequent night visitor to her room, had never expressed the same boundary and had melted against Ashe’s lips before anyone’s clothes had even come off on Night One. But, Ashe didn’t push it. Didn’t ask why. Never had. Yet in the days leading up to tonight, she had stared directly at Katarina's mouth at every opportunity she had, and found herself struggling internally.
Maybe it was something in the way Katarina’s walls had begun to slip around her. The aloof assassin had seemed almost resentful of the way these nights had quickly begun to play out, at first. But now she offered no resistance when Ashe put her roughly onto her back and had her way with her. Clawing battles for control had given way to an unspoken urge to be broken, which had further yielded to something else that Ashe struggled to name but felt echoing deeply in every subtle movement of unspoken offering.
Now, Katarina leaned into Ashe’s touches with an eagerness that had not been there before - not only accepting the situation, but seeming to quietly revel in it. She really looked at Ashe, now, for longer periods each time. She had stopped bolting for the window the moment the post-orgasmic high had worn off, lingering a bit longer each time in noticeable increments. A few times, she had even spoken of life beyond the four walls of Ashe’s room. Never anything too deep, or serious. She avoided topics that could somehow lead back to Noxus or whatever duties she performed in its name. Ashe held the same reservations regarding Freljord, but had also found herself responding in kind to the little bits of information that she managed to glean about the other woman.
She had even quietly begun to collect them. Not for any nefarious purposes, but out of a sense of…something. She wasn’t sure. There was an odd sort of comfort in learning the most mundane of details spoken in passing. Katarina enjoyed it when the dining hall offered chocolate cake. She was very slowly making her way through a fantasy novel written by a fledgling Piltovian author and judging it for inaccuracies in its portrayal of warfare. She had walked the surrounding grounds of the Institute enough times to have every blade of grass memorized on a mental map.
Maybe it was a blessing that she had again not run tonight, when Ashe’s silent frustration had finally boiled over into her full awareness - when she had let that wanting infect every one of her motions, making them rough and heartbreakingly gentle all at once as she took the other woman. I would like to kiss you, she had screamed silently with each pass of fingers, each lingering look. It had been all she could think as she had forced one extra release from Katarina’s body, writhing with oversensitive desperation beneath her own.
She couldn’t be sure if Katarina had gotten the message. But in the aftermath, the assassin had indulged a new need - one that had only happened a handful of times thus far. She had reached out for Ashe before the tremors of her pleasure had faded, and Ashe had responded in kind, a quiet sort of relief filling her as it registered that she was allowed to pull Katarina into her arms and hold her.
With her this close, the familiar notes of Sarah’s perfume clinging to her skin and hair were impossible to miss. This marked the third time that Ashe had detected the scent in such a context. A curious part of her wanted to ask what arrangement the pair had agreed upon after the singular occasion that a scheduling error had brought both of them to Ashe’s room on the same night. Another, adjacent, insistent part of her wanted to schedule a repeat of said rendezvous. She resisted both urges. Sarah, she was almost certain, would agree eagerly. But yet another part of Ashe felt increasingly concerned that the idea could fracture whatever tension it was that had Katarina always coming back to her.
Katarina shifted in her hold, lifting her head enough to look at Ashe’s face in the darkness. Ashe had long learned to keep the room as shrouded in shadows as possible on such nights, as Katarina clearly preferred it that way, but the gentle rays of moonlight filtering in through the window and the scant few inches still between them gave her just a clear enough view of the assassin’s face.
She wasn’t expecting the gentleness of the expression that she found there, softening every tense line that was so often highlighted with a glare or a scowl. Ashe’s heart gave a singular thump, powerful enough that she felt it on the inside of her chest. She was getting used to that sensation around Sarah, but feeling it now held a terror all of its own. A line was being skirted here, one that would be even more dangerous to cross with a famed Noxian assassin than the one that had already been crossed with the most notable of Bilgewater’s ship captains. This logic crumbled to nothing almost as quickly as the thought occurred to her.
“I would like to kiss you.”
She hadn’t registered that the words had been spoken, half-convinced that they had been just a particularly loud part of the silent mantra in her head. But muscles tensed in her hold in the next moment, alongside a sharp inhale as Katarina lowered her eyes to break the stare. Second passed in which Ashe felt increasingly certain that she’d done it; she’d broken whatever fragile spell kept them orbiting one another. Still, she couldn’t take the words back, so she did not try, waiting in the deafening silence as Katarina held herself with a practiced sort of stillness that had probably killed people before.
“Then do it,” came the muttered response as Katarina let out a sigh that sat somewhere between relief and resignation.
The breathless permission stalled Ashe for a moment, surprise filling her at the realization that her desire had been answered. Katarina’s head lifted back up again, but the rest of her remained still. Ashe felt those sharp eyes in the darkness. Waiting, as she had. Allowing Ashe the right to decide exactly what happened next.
Something in that wordless acquiescence had Ashe’s mind reminding her to be careful, which was almost laughable at this point. The vague assertion meant little to her now. What did that even mean? Did the instinct surface for her own sake, or for Katarina’s? Against her better judgement, it was almost certainly the latter. In the next few seconds, she thought only of how she should keep the motion chaste and brief, so as not to push her luck too far.
When she lifted a hand to cup Katarina’s jaw carefully and felt the assassin relax against the touch, directly contradicting the response she had expected to that, said plan fell apart quickly. It fractured further at the first hesitant press of her lips as she leaned in close, momentarily startled at the realization that Katarina’s own lips were surprisingly…soft. A bit chapped around the edges, sure, but that hardly registered. She wasn’t certain what exactly she had expected. Aggression, maybe. Clumsy motions against her own mouth from a woman that she imagined rarely, if ever, indulged a request like this. The briefest of contact to satisfy Ashe’s need before the moment of disconnection and indifference.
There was none of that. Katarina met each brush of her lips with the same sort of nervous reluctance as her own, at first. That fell away at a pace that nearly gave Ashe vertigo, the sudden surge of confidence felt as a tangible force when an arm was then caressing her side on its way to snake around to her shoulder blades. Katarina’s fingers pressed into her back, firm and insistent. The message was clear: do not pull away.
So, she didn't. She let her own free hand slip up a scarred shoulder that had released its tension, sliding to the base of Katarina’s skull, digging into long red tresses that she had pulled on with viciousness multiple times already. This hold was different, pulling Katarina softly closer instead of yanking her away as her own mouth grew bolder without her permission, lips moving with a hunger that seemed somehow stronger now that it was finally being sated.
Yet Katarina still didn’t break the kiss, matching every slight escalation with her own fervor until Ashe was nearly lightheaded from lack of air. Only then did she finally pull away, yet still remained close enough that Ashe could feel her quickened breath against her face.
Words felt like a distant impossibility after that. What was she supposed to even say? She might have let out a surprised comment that Katarina was a startlingly good kisser, had that same fear of pushing her away not been so strong. She might have thanked her for the indulgence, but something in that felt as though it would cheapen the action. She might have asked if Katarina was alright - and somehow, that question was most tempting of all options - but the scrap of logic she still clung to told her that such a check in was nonsensical. It was only a kiss. Wasn’t it?
Katarina just watched her in the seconds that followed, and Ashe could sense her own speechlessness. She almost looked surprised. A few more quickened breaths preceded her gaze lowering to Ashe’s lips, staring with a laser focus that Ashe had only ever seen on her face in the heat of battle on the Fields.
She wasn’t prepared for what came next.
Katarina shot up at her signature alarming speed, but she did not bolt from the bed, as Ashe might have expected. She seized both of Ashe’s wrists as she twisted herself upwards, pushing them down onto either side of Ashe’s body as she loomed over her.
For the first time, Ashe let her do it. She offered no resistance at all as Katarina held that position, her body halting with the same deadly stillness again. From this angle, the moonlight filtering in from behind cast her face in full shadow. Ashe could not read her expression, but she knew that Katarina could see her face quite plainly. A week ago, she might have schooled said face into practiced neutrality. Two weeks ago, she might have protested loudly and ripped herself from the assassin’s grip.
She could easily do either now, in theory, but she didn’t. Restraint, at this point, felt like too much to bear. All she could do was feel her own desire soften her face even further as her spine arched up towards Katarina by millimeters, as if pulled by some powerful gravity that she couldn't bring herself to be afraid of.
“Fuck,” the assassin whispered. The desperation laid bare in the single emphatic syllable made the curse somehow all the more endearing and relatable.
“I know,” was all Ashe could say to that. She barely got the words out before Katarina was surging down to kiss her again.